小丑女主演的真人版電影《芭比娃娃》即將上映…芭比娃娃到底代表著什麼呢?

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Barbie doesn’t belong in a box

芭比娃娃不屬於一個盒子

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The release of the

hotly-anticipated

“Barbie” movie is almost upon
us, and the

cultural buzz

has never been louder. The film, starring
Margot Robbie in the

lead role

and directed by Greta Gerwig,

debuts

on
July 21. I haven’t seen Gerwig’s movie yet, but I do know that,
along with almost every woman I know, I have had a lot of feelings about
the

resurgence

of Barbie in public consciousness over the past six
months.  

備受期待的《芭比娃娃》電影即將上映,文化熱議從未如此響亮。這部電影由瑪格特·羅比主演,格蕾塔·葛韋格執導,於
7 月 21 日首映(其發行商和 CNN
共享母公司華納兄弟發現)。我還沒有看過葛韋格的電影,但我知道,和我認識的幾乎所有女人一樣,在過去的六個月裡,我對芭比娃娃在公眾意識中的復興有很多感覺。

And all those feelings are … complicated. In the pantheon of
iconic children’s toys, this buxom doll looms especially large as a
Rorschach test of gendered playtime. Is
Barbie a trailblazing feminist? A representative of the worst sort of body-image policing

? Is she a liberator of girlhood dreams, or an outdated tool of the

patriarchy

? The answer seems to be: All of the above.  

所有這些感覺都是…複雜。在標誌性兒童玩具的萬神殿中,這個身姿豐盈的娃娃作為性別遊戲時間的羅夏測試顯得特別大。芭比娃娃是開拓性的女權主義者嗎?最糟糕的身體形象警務的代表?她是少女夢想的解放者,還是父權制的過時工具?答案似乎是:以上所有。

Born into a girls’-toys landscape that was populated almost exclusively with baby dolls, Barbie was inspired by a raunchy German gag gift

spotted in a shop window by the co-founder of Mattel, Ruth Handler, and
her teenage daughter in 1956. Handler was

captivated

by the small
doll’s blond ponytail, lined eyes and

pouty

lips. A few years later,
Barbie was born.  

芭比娃娃出生在一個幾乎完全由嬰兒娃娃組成的女孩玩具領域,她的靈感來自美泰聯合創始人露絲·漢德勒(Ruth

Handler)和她十幾歲的女兒於1956年在商店櫥窗裡發現的淫穢的德國惡作劇禮物。漢德勒被小娃娃的金色馬尾辮、線條清晰的眼睛和噘嘴的嘴唇迷住了。幾年後,芭比娃娃出生了。

Barbie quickly became a unique icon of womanhood — so it’s hardly
surprising that she means so many different things to different people.
She was a bold new innovation in American toys, an avatar of adulthood
who would expand into over
250 professions and, more recently, a wide range of ethnicities and body types. Today, there’s even an “Inspiring Women” line

of Barbies based on real people, including Rosa Parks and Jane Goodall.  

芭比娃娃很快成為女性的獨特偶像——所以她對不同的人意味著這麼多不同的東西也就不足為奇了。她是美國玩具界的大膽創新,是成年的化身,將擴充套件到250多個職業,最近,她擴充套件到各種種族和體型。今天,甚至還有基於真人的“鼓舞人心的女性”芭比娃娃系列,包括羅莎·帕克斯和簡·古道爾。

President
2000 Barbie was aimed at inspiring young people to become educated
about their right to vote and emphasizing the importance of women in
politics.

2000年總統芭比娃娃旨在鼓勵年輕人接受有關其投票權的教育,並強調婦女在政治中的重要性。

But it hasn’t all been empowering. Gloria Steinemhas said that Barbie “was pretty much everything the feminist movement was trying to escape from.” A 2016 study found that ultra-thin Barbie dolls have had negative effects on very young girls’ body image, and a Huffington Post story
from 2011 explored the horrifying reality of building a life-size
Barbie: “At 5’9” tall and weighing 110 lbs, the traditional Barbie would
have a BMI of 16.24 and fit the weight criteria for anorexia. She
likely would not menstruate,” the article said, adding that “If Barbie
was a real woman, she’d have to walk on all fours due to her
proportions.” (She does now come in various body types.)  
但這並不都是賦權的。格洛麗亞·斯泰納姆(Gloria

Steinem)曾說過,芭比娃娃“幾乎是女權主義運動試圖逃避的一切”。2016年的一項研究發現,超薄芭比娃娃對年輕女孩的身體形象產生了負面影響,赫芬頓郵報2011年的一篇報道探討了建造真人大小的芭比娃娃的可怕現實:“身高5英尺9英寸,體重110磅,傳統的芭比娃娃的BMI為16.24,符合厭食症的體重標準。她可能不會來月經,“文章說,並補充說”如果芭比娃娃是一個真正的女人,由於她的比例,她必須四肢著地走路。(她現在確實有各種體型。)

Plus, there’s another aspect to Barbie that gets overlooked in the
feminist-versus-oppressor debate about her impact on the little kids
(and not-so-little kids) who play with her. For some of us, Barbie was
our first glorious introduction to camp. As
Susan Sontagwrote,
“Camp is a vision of the world in terms of style — but a particular
kind of style. It is the love of the exaggerated, the ‘off,’ of
things-being-what-they-are-not.” In a world of dolls designed to look
like realistic babies, Barbie is nothing if not exaggerated. With her
big hair, big boobs and molded-high-heel feet, she’s essentially doing
female drag: an over-the-top riff on the notion of womanhood. And
despite the shameful slurs coming from the right, kids love a drag
queen, as shown in the quotes from one
story-hour anecdote

: “I love your dress!” “It’s so big and

fluffy

!” “I love

glitter

!”  

此外,芭比娃娃的另一個方面在女權主義者與壓迫者的辯論中被忽視了,那就是她對和她一起玩的小孩(和不那麼小的孩子)的影響。對於我們中的一些人來說,芭比娃娃是我們第一次光榮地進入營地。正如蘇珊·桑塔格(Susan

Sontag)所寫,“營地是風格上對世界的看法——但是一種特殊的風格。這是對誇張的、'關閉'的事物的愛,對事物的愛。在一個設計成看起來像逼真的嬰兒的娃娃世界中,芭比娃娃如果不誇張的話什麼都不是。她的大頭髮、大胸部和模壓高跟鞋,本質上是在做女性變裝:對女性概念的過度即興演奏。儘管來自右翼的可恥誹謗,孩子們還是喜歡變裝皇后,正如一個故事小時軼事中的引述所示:“我喜歡你的裙子!“好大好蓬鬆!”“我喜歡閃光!”

A Barbie from 1959 shown with swimsuit, stand and trademark box.

1959年的芭比娃娃,帶有泳裝,支架和商標盒。

Importantly, despite being a representation of hyperfeminized
adulthood, Barbie has, throughout her endless reinventions, never had
kids — a remarkable achievement for a 64-year-old toy for girls. If you
were a kid who, like me, was deeply bored by the idea of playing mommy,
Barbie represented liberation from that game. It’s a feeling Gerwig
channeled masterfully in the first
teaser for the film, which riffed on Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968).  
重要的是,儘管芭比娃娃代表了超女性化的成年,但在她無休止的重塑過程中,芭比娃娃從未有過孩子——對於一個
64
歲的女孩玩具來說,這是一個了不起的成就。如果你是一個像我一樣對扮演媽媽的想法感到厭煩的孩子,芭比娃娃代表了從遊戲中解放出來。這是葛韋格在電影的第一個預告片中巧妙地引導的一種感覺,該預告片借鑑了斯坦利·庫布里克的《2001:太空漫遊》。
Was the childfree Barbie still a wildly gendered toy? Obviously —
but she was also the star of the most grandiose and glamorous stories
you could make up for a single, impossibly proportioned gal on the go.
For many kids, the appeal didn’t lie in how much you wanted to literally
look like her — it was in the
freewheeling lifestyle she represented. Imagine how meaningful this would have been in Barbie’s early years especially — an era in which little girls were being actively groomed for motherhood as life’s most important calling. (That’s not to say it’s not still happening

,
either. As one expert suggests, “consider doing something
gender-nonconforming with your children’s existing dolls, such as having
Barbie win a wrestling championship or giving Ken a

tutu

. And encourage
the boys in your life to play with them too.”)  

沒有孩子的芭比娃娃還是一個性別狂野的玩具嗎?很明顯–但她也是最宏偉、最迷人的故事的主角,你可以為一個單身、身材不可能完美的女孩編造這樣的故事。對許多孩子來說,她的吸引力並不在於你有多想把自己打扮成她的樣子,而在於她所代表的自由自在的生活方式。想象一下,尤其是在芭比娃娃的早年–小女孩們正被積極培養成為母親,將其作為人生最重要的使命–這將是多麼有意義。(這並不是說現在沒有這樣做。正如一位專家建議的那樣,"考慮用孩子們現有的玩偶做一些不符合性別的事情,比如讓芭比娃娃贏得摔跤冠軍或給肯穿上蓬蓬裙。並鼓勵生活中的男孩也和他們一起玩。)

With her cartoonish proportions, Barbie has always invited cheeky takes. She’s been co-opted for satirical purposes countless times over
the years. She starred in Todd Haynes’
“Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story,” the “Carol” director’s 1987 dark stop-motion short film about the life of anorexic singer Karen Carpenter. She was painted by Andy Warhol in 1986. And in 1993, a performance artist group calling themselves the Barbie Liberation Organization
swapped the voice boxes of Teen Talk Barbies and G.I. Joes, resulting
in a macho soldier who said “Math class is tough!” and “Wanna go
shopping?”, and a Barbie who said things like “Vengeance is mine!”  
芭比娃娃以其卡通化的比例,總是遭到人們對她進行無恥的嘲諷。多年來,她被無數次地用於諷刺目的。她曾出演託德·海因斯(Todd Haynes)的《超級巨星》(Superstar:卡倫·卡彭特的故事》,這部由《卡羅爾》導演於 1987 年拍攝的黑暗定格動畫短片講述了厭食歌手卡倫·卡彭特的一生。1986 年,安迪·沃霍爾為她作畫。1993 年,一個自稱為 "芭比娃娃解放組織 "的行為藝術團體將 "少年說 "芭比娃娃和 "大兵喬伊 "的語音盒進行了互換,從而產生了一個會說 "數學課真難!"和 "想去購物嗎?"的大男子主義士兵,以及一個會說 "復仇是我的!"之類話語的芭比娃娃。
The fairly eye-roll-worthy Teen Talk Barbie, incidentally, also inspired the Malibu Stacy dolls
of “The Simpsons,” Lisa’s willowy doll who said “Don’t ask me, I’m just
a girl!” But even the face-palm missteps along the path of Barbie’s
development are pretty funny; the
1965 Slumber Party Barbie

who came with a diet book whose one instruction reads “DON’T EAT!”
could be interpreted as a

wink

at the ham-handedness of diet culture.  

順便說一下,相當值得翻白眼的青少年談話芭比娃娃也啟發了“辛普森一家”的馬里布·史黛西娃娃,麗莎的柳葉娃娃說:“不要問我,我只是一個女孩!但即使是芭比娃娃發展道路上的臉掌失誤也相當有趣;1965年的睡眠派對芭比娃娃帶著一本飲食書,其中一本寫著“不要吃!”的指示可以解釋為對飲食文化的笨拙眨眼。

Among former Barbie owners, a classic rite of passage is swapping
stories of all the irreverent stuff you did with, or to, your dolls.
Gerwig shared her own tale of misdeeds on the pink carpet at the film’s
premiere: “First, you start by taking the braid out, then you brush it
out, then you see if you can curl it with a curling iron − you can’t, it
melts − and then you cut it all off,” she
said

.  

在前芭比娃娃主人中,一個經典的成年禮是交換你對洋娃娃所做的所有不敬的事情的故事。葛韋格在電影首映式上分享了她自己在粉紅色地毯上的不端行為故事:“首先,你首先把辮子拿出來,然後把它刷掉,然後你看看你是否可以用捲髮棒捲曲它
– 你不能,它融化 – 然後你把它全部剪掉,”她說。

From the looks of it, Kate McKinnon will be playing this version — “Weird Barbie”

— in the movie. Impeccable casting, as usual, for Gerwig’s movies.  

從外觀上看,凱特·麥金農將在電影中扮演這個版本——“奇怪的芭比”。像往常一樣,為葛韋格的電影提供無可挑剔的選角。

The existence of so many opposing interpretations of her meaning
is kind of the point: The beauty of Barbie is that she can be anything. (Or, as the tagline for the film puts it,
she’s everything

.)
Which is exactly why she still resonates with kids and why generations
of adults are watching trailers for Gerwig’s movie with unadulterated
delight. So let’s not put Barbie, or the generations who’ve loved her,
in a box.  

對她的含義存在如此多的相反解釋是重點:芭比娃娃的美妙之處在於她可以成為任何東西。(或者,正如電影的標語所說,她就是一切。這就是為什麼她仍然能引起孩子們的共鳴,以及為什麼幾代成年人都在觀看葛韋格電影的預告片。因此,我們不要把芭比娃娃,或者愛她的幾代人放在一個盒子裡。


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